We conservatives have gotten this wrong

“You know, I think we’ve really gotten this wrong as conservatives. I think that we have been so engaged in politics, and putting all our hopes for cultural change in politics, that we’ve completely ignored the value of culture, and building up cultural institutions….If we on the right would be more engaged in culture, and think that culture is more than just [a] mock-up of whatever pop music the Evangelicals can come up with, and more than just saying no to whatever pop culture throws up there, if we can actually get engaged in more creative endeavors at a very deep level, and loving art for the sake of art, then maybe we might get somewhere in this culture. I can’t see that electing Republicans over and over again has managed to conserve anything.”

Features: Definition in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: past tense and past participle of wake Definition in African American Vernacular English (AAVE): “well-informed, up-to-date” First print appearance of the AAVE usage: 1942 In the late ’90s and early aughts, the word woke was a life vest. My parents and the other black people I grew up with […] […]

Hats off, please, to Mat Johnson , author of this wonderful, black-humored novel - part social satire, part meditation on race in America, part metafiction and, just as important, a rollicking fantasy adventure. " Pym " is outrageously entertaining, a book that brilliantly re-imagines and extends...